Loyalty's Price
by Daystar Searcher
Summary: What I am choosing to believe happens with Goren and Eames after 'Loyalty, Part II.' Focuses heavily on the unresolved Donny Carlson plotline.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I claim no credit, I earn nothing but the satisfaction of tying up a storyline the official writer left hanging for no good reason.**

**And yes, I'm starting another WIP. I will finish the other two, I promise. It will take awhile, but they will get done. If I don't finish things they bounce around my brain and torment me.**

**Dedicated to skyfare, who is even more pissed off about the unresolved Donny storyline than I am.**

He was halfway down the block before he realized that he had forgotten his coat. He paused on the sidewalk.

Go back…?

But the sun was warm on his skin.

The breeze was light as silk, and worlds away from harsh fluorescent lights and recycled air.

It urged him to forget, for a little while at least.

Bobby began to walk again, and turned left at the corner.

Several seconds later, a man with a gun followed him.

xxxxx

It did not take long to pack up her desk and locker. Not even half as long as it had taken to quit her job, and the Chief had only put up a desultory fight.

Part of her had enjoyed making him squirm as he tried to encourage her to stay without _actually _encouraging her. But not enough to talk to him a second longer than she had to.

Also saving time was the fact that no one interrupted her, the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her jaw clearly broadcasting "do not fuck with me" on all frequencies. She kept her eyes focused on her task. Packed it all up, his stuff too, partly to save him the trip and partly because leaving anything of his felt too much like leaving him behind.

A couple framed pictures. Books. His binder and coat. Her Advil. Pebbles, pennies, paperclips.

It was really fucking tragic that it all fit in one box.

xxxxx

Half an hour after deciding that scraping her stickers off her locker was pointless (and she secretly liked the idea that she'd leave something of hers behind, the idea that you couldn't scour Alex Eames out of MCS if you tried), she found herself standing before Bobby's door, contemplating pressing the doorbell yet again. She hadn't seen his car, but he'd been talking about selling it.

She shifted her weight to another hip, her arms starting to hurt from holding almost a decade of history in a single cardboard box. She was about decide to fuck it all and come back another time when Bobby wasn't playing hide-and-go-seek or drown-your-sorrows-at-the-nearest-bar, when she saw them.

Scratches around the keyhole.

Those hadn't been there last time.

Eames set down the box, reached automatically for the gun on her hip before remembering that it wasn't there. She cursed under her breath, and bent down to take her piece—her own, not the department's—out of her ankle holster, her heartbeat pounding in her ears.

She turned the handle swiftly and it gave, the door opening, and she ducked out of the potential line of fire as she entered, her eyes and the end of her revolver drawing a bead on the figure in the shadows at the opposite end of the room—male, lanky, adolescent. "Freeze!"

"Detective Eames?" He stepped into the light, hands up.

Donny Carlson.

She let out a long, slow breath. Lowered the gun.

"You are so damn lucky I quit the force today."


	2. Chapter 2

Eames made them ham sandwiches and a pot of coffee. Donny wolfed his down—poor kid looked like a fencepost—his eyes occasionally darting back towards her gun like it was going to go off if he didn't keep watching it. It also didn't escape her notice that he had chosen the chair furthest from her end of the table.

When the sandwiches were gone, Eames raided Goren's freezer for some Haagen-Dazs . She did it mostly to kill more time—okay, and maybe a little because Donny looked one missed meal away from starring in a 'We Are the World' commercial—but apparently handing out chocolate ice cream was all it took to convince Donny you weren't evil, because halfway through inhaling his portion he started talking to her.

"So…why'd you quit?"

She was _not_ having this conversation with her ex-partner's fugitive nephew right now.

"Has Bobby been home?" she asked instead.

"Uh, no." He scuffed his shoe against the carpet. "I was, uh, waiting for him to get home." He looked up at her, eyes wide. "Is he gonna be mad at me? I didn't want to bother him, but, uh, I started thinking that maybe I should've, like, called…"

So Bobby hadn't been keeping things from her again.

She felt her shoulders relax, suddenly aware of how tight they'd been. The loop playing in the back of her brain_—it's not like Testarossa and Stoat, don't think about that now, he doesn't have any obligation to tell you, don't think about that now, it doesn't mean he doesn't trust you, don't think about that now—_began to peter out.

"He'll be glad you're safe," she said.

"I hope so." Donny rubbed the back of his neck and she had to suppress a smile: _Gee, I wonder where he gets that from? _"I used all my money to catch the bus up from Jersey, I been staying down by—"

Eames put up her hand. "No details. I don't want to have to testify against you."

"Oh, okay." He fidgeted. _"_So, you're not, uh, going to turn me in, right? 'Cause I can't go back. I heard Uncle Bobby got out so I came to see him but I can't go back, they'll kill me, you know they'll kill me—"

"_Breathe_," Eames interrupted. "Before your head explodes."

"But they'll—"

"Tates got closed down," she told him. "There was a formal investigation, and the director and a lot of the staff went to prison. There're going to open it up again in a few months, once all the new staff are fully vetted, and then vetted again, and then once more for luck."

"Will I have to—go back, still, though?"

"Let's wait till your uncle gets back before we tackle that one, okay?" _And the ones about your father. _Eames glanced up that the microwave clock. _Speaking of your uncle—where the hell are you, Bobby? _He really should've been home by now.

"So, how'd—how Bobby get out of Tates?"

"I drove up and got him," she answered distractedly, trying to ignore the worries that were gnawing at the edges of her mind. "He didn't call when he was supposed to."

_He said 'see you around,' _her inner voice insisted in response to the question she was very deliberately refusing to ask. _There's no way he would…not after surviving these last couple of years—just because he's never hugged you to say goodbye before doesn't mean—_

"When do you think he'll be home?"

"Who knows?" she said, going for flippant. Unconcerned. "He didn't pick up when I called. Maybe he went out to a bar, met someone."

"Oh. So you guys have, like, an open relationship?"

Her cell phone chose that exact moment to ring, and the unleashing of the full force of her sarcasm on Donny took a backseat. And once she read the text, became completely unimportant.

It was from Bobby, and it was only a single word: _Jo._

_(The metal of the scissors should be cold against her face, but it is warm, so very very warm and slightly sticky and she thinks she isn't screaming but that's only because all she can hear is how LOUD she is breathing, so why can't she breathe—_

"Are you okay?" Donny said, and she realized that she'd been staring at the message for too long. What did Bobby mean? Why would he say that?

Maybe _he_ didn't.

"Detective Eames, are you, like—"

"I'm fine."

"Is it from Uncle Bobby?"

"Probably." Was it possible he'd gone to see Declan? Let him borrow his phone?

_It could just be a mistake_, she reminded herself. He could've just hit Send too soon—it wasn't like it hadn't happened before; they didn't really make cell phones for people with Bobby-sized hands.

He'd call her, if that was what happened, wouldn't spend forty seconds ponderously typing out an explanation.

She snapped her phone shut. It didn't ring.

He would've explained if he could have. Even Bobby wouldn't expect their telepathy to go that far. So that meant one of two things—well, one of several different things, but if you disregarded motive then it boiled down to two.

And with either of the two possibilities, motive could go hang as far as she was concerned.

"Are you, uh, going to call him back?"

"Nope." She stood, walked to the fridge. She had pretended, earlier, not to see Bobby hastily tug down one of his Molly photos an inch to obscure the name and phone number of the facility where Jo Gage was being kept. Had been caught, in that instant, between irritation and a sweetly painful tugging in her chest.

She dialed the number, gave her badge number (and gave a mental sigh of relief when her suspicions that her paperwork hadn't gone through yet were confirmed). Made sure that Jo Gage was still in a coma, and that Bobby hadn't been to see her since the Declan fiasco.

"Uh, Detective Eames—"

"Thanks," she said, ending the call. "Donny, if you unpacked anything, pack it back up."

"Uh, I didn't, really…"

He was looking like a kicked puppy, but she did not have time for this right now. She pulled out her wallet—_thank God I hit the ATM this morning—_and pulled out a wad of twenties. "Get a haircut, sunglasses, clothes you wouldn't have been caught dead with two years ago, and meet me back here in three hours."

"Um, sure, what are you doing?"

"Hopefully, overreacting."

One click to Contacts, one click to her name, one to Options, up twice and then Select once to Create Message. One for J, three for O. One for Send.

The quickest way to send a message he knew she'd react to.

"Oh, and I left a box outside. Put that on the counter, okay?"

Leaving a flabbergasted Donny in her wake, Eames exited the apartment and made for her car, dialing a number on her cell as she went.

It was time to call in some favors.


	3. Chapter 3

Donny was waiting on the sidewalk for her when she got back. The poor kid had gotten himself a freaking faux hawk, skinny jeans, a V-neck tee, and sunglasses big enough to put Jennifer Lopez to shame.

She rolled down the window. "You look like hipster heaven."

"You look…um. Brunette."

"We'll make a detective of you yet," she said. Nodded towards the bag. "That your stuff? Stick in the trunk. Time we hit the road."

"Uh, sure." Donny nodded, and bounced back and forth a little on his heels. "Uh, where, uh, exactly are we going?"

"We're going to find your uncle."

She was grateful for her own sunglasses as she said that, as she blinked a little rapidly over the words and tightened her jaw against the possibility that—no. She'd find him. She would.

"Oh, right." He threw his bag in the trunk and took shotgun. He drummed his fingers on his knees as she pulled back into traffic.

She kept her own voice clipped and crisp. "Your new ID is in the glove department. You're Max Kinney. I'm your mother Evelyn."

"Look, I, I think I have a right to know what's going on—"

"Your uncle's in trouble. Again. That's all you need to know."

xxxxx

It was dark again.

It had been dark for a long time, and then it had been burning bright until all he could see was the light shoved in his eyes and there were questions and his eyes watering burning going to melt out of his skull and all the light.

And then there was pain.

And then it was dark.

The fabric over his face was rough and scratchy, wet, wool? It smelled of grease, lanolin. He could smell machine oil. The whole left side of his face hurt. He couldn't smell the blood anymore.

There weren't any sounds, except things that were so soft and shifting and far away that maybe they weren't sounds, maybe he made them up in his head to keep from going insane going insane going insange-going insane-going—

One two three four five six seven eight nine ten.

Columbus sailed the ocean blue, six times seven is forty-two.

Ten nine eight seven six five four three two one.

He wanted to laugh with how stupid it was, that they had grabbed him, that they had thought he was a danger to them, when it wasn't until just after they left him in this room (blood clogging up his nostrils, dripping down into his teeth) that he'd managed to work out what they thought he knew…

Sounds?

Footsteps.

Click. Light through the wool, through his swollen eyelids.

They yanked the hood off, threads catching where they'd stuck in the drying scabs. Light.

One of them raised a fist.

Darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

**A.N. Hey everyone, thanks for all the reviews. To those of you concerned about the lack of updates—don't worry, it will get finished. Updates usually take me a long time, since I'm working on two LOCI WIPs, distracted by a shiny new fandom (well, a shiny *old* fandom, since it's classic Doctor Who), about to graduate from college, and trying to put together an awesome summer roadtrip adventure, but—it will get finished. I can't *not* finish things; it makes my brain itch.**

**Also, woot woot for new episodes this weekend! …that will immediately Joss everything I've written here, but whatever. New episodes!**

**This chapter is for scriberestagere, for her donation to the LJ Help Japan charity auction.**

_Fear the good man. The evil man will take time to gloat, to enjoy his power over you. The good man will kill you without a second thought._

Bobby tried to remember where he had read those words, or words like them. Tried to conjure up the printed pages in the darkness behind his eyelids.

Kelly Link, Kazuo Ishiguro, Roald Dahl… no. Neil Gaiman? No, but closer. Jasper Fforde, Robert Rankin, Eoin Co—

Pow! A fist slamming up under his chin, red exploding behind his eyelids, exploding the words. Stars. Cold surface against his cheek. Concrete. When had he hit the floor? Tiny sliver of light through the blindfold. Red.

Game, it was a—not a game, but think of it as a game. Yes. Keep them thinking, keep them guessing, keep them thinking, unsure, how much he knew, how much they could afford not to know.

Terry Pratchett. That was who had written those lines. Or lines like them. Bobby Goren liked Terry Pratchett. He was a man who made you think the word _indomitable._

The scrape of a boot heel being drawn back over the uneven concrete floor, and Goren knew precisely one and a half seconds before he heard the burst of that sickly wet and crunching sound that the man was going to kick him in the ribs.

Still, he couldn't help but think that in this case the author had gotten it wrong. It was not good men that kept their enemies alive not a second longer than they needed them. It was efficient men.

Certain branches of the American government could be surprisingly efficient.

xxxxx

"Talk to me about terrorists."

A sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line, a burst of static. Dr. Pynchon's eyes flaring wide for a second behind the thick pane of glass before her eyelids creased slightly in a bemused smile. "Do you start all conversations like that, Detective Eames?"

"Only the important ones." Eames wound the cord of the payphone tight around her fingers, felt it bite against her skin. If she looked down she would see the skin blanched white. She kept her gaze on Katrina Pynchon's eyes. "And it's Doctor. Doctor Evelyn Kinney."

"Ah." Dr. Pynchon tapped her fingernails against the countertop, one, two, three. "Not police business, then."

"No."

"Something illegal."

"Yes."

"And I should help you because…?"

"Because your lawyers can argue for eternity that what you did in Guantanamo was perfectly legal, but we both know it was still wrong. And you still want to atone for that."

The handle of the black phone slipped slightly in Dr. Pynchon's hands, barely a centimeter. But Eames saw it.

The prisoner sat back in her chair. She did it slowly, as though any sudden movement might give her away. She studied Eames for a long, long time. Then she exhaled, through her teeth. Nodded.

"What did you want to know?"

xxxxx

_The unspoken and the unlived and the undone are far more important than anything you will ever speak or live or do._

A lecture on Henry James, college, sophomore year. He'd been hungover and the words had rattled around in his skull.

The words his interrogators had shouted were still rattling around in his skull.

_The act of torture is the most intimate act in which we can ever engage, because it is only through the violent transgression of the boundaries of body and mind and soul that we can truly know another's body and mind and soul. _

Another lecture, the philosophies of de Sade versus Benjamin Franklin. Had it been the same class as the James lecture? He remembered the roughness of the carpet, sharp and bristly as though woven with steel wool. It was supposed to keep the students from ruining it when they tracked in snow and salt off the roads.

He was alone now.

Everything hurt.

_Why does Werther love Lotte? Because she is unattainable. Because through his hopeless love of her, his romantic ideal of love will never have to be sullied._

That one was definitely a different class. Freshman year, his first lit course. A professor with a thick Czechoslovakian accent, thick glasses, and a plunging neckline.

He hoped Eames hadn't gotten the message. He hoped that if she had gotten it, she hadn't understood it. Had passed it off as a mistake, or one final cruel jab from her overbearing, overreacting, recently-fired stone-around-her-neck former partner.

If he'd known what he had gotten himself into, he never would have sent it.

_In the world of Nathaniel Hawthorne, it is impossible not to sin. Even to explicitly attempt not to sin is in fact the worst sin of all: pride. To think that you could ever be less than a lowly human._

_To think you could ever fathom the will of God._

xxxxx

Donny put the age of the guy Detective Eames was talking to at around thirty, though the hunch of the guy's shoulders had him wanting to guess older while the wideness of his eyes made him look younger. The guy had greasy hair and the kind of nose you didn't usually see outside of fantasy movies with gnomes and sprites and trolls, bladed and thin but swooping upward with a silly knob at the end. His eyes kept darting around (though he hadn't spotted Donny in the passenger seat of the car out in the parking lot), and he alternated picking at the loose threads of his hoodie with using it to wipe that ridiculous nose.

Donny kicked at the glove compartment and wondered how much longer it was going to be before Detective Eames finished talking to this Robbie guy.

She still hadn't told him much of anything. "He's a hacker," she'd said a few hours ago, not looking at him as she steered through traffic. "Well, a programmer-turned-hacker. Your uncle and I arrested him for crushing a man to death with a vending machine."

"And so you're going to get him to help you how?"

A grim smile had twisted her mouth. "I'm going to ask him very, very nicely."

And even that was a fountain of information compared to how much she hadn't told him. Where his uncle was. Why the necessity for all the secrecy. Why she was insisting on being so scarily cryptic that she'd actually freaked him out into getting a goddamn _fauxhawk_ for Chrissakes.

He kicked the glove compartment again, faster this time. He couldn't stay still.

Maybe he was finally going crazy, just like everyone else in his family.

At that moment Detective Eames stood, giving a short sharp nod and something like a smile to Gnome Guy. She made her way back to the car.

"Find out anything interesting?" Donny asked. He tried not to sound like he was sulking.

Eames shot him a look that said the not-sulking plan had failed. Then she softened a little, almost imperceptibly, around the eyes. She gave his arm an awkward pat. And somehow that scared Donny more than anything.

_Uncle Bobby must really be in trouble._

Neither of them spoke a word during the next four hours it took to get them to a motel, though Detective Eames' fingers blanched white against the steering wheel, and the glove department acquired a definite dent.


End file.
